My experiments with CUDA

Those of you who are tracking NVIDIA and GPGPU would be aware of CUDA 2.0 .. well the final version is released and is available on many platforms including Windows Vista. I had been experimenting a bit with CUDA APIs in my spare time on my Fedora 9 machine and 8500 GT card. Though I have a similar setup for my Vista machine, I didn’t take the pain of configuring it on Vista … it looked far simpler for me to use gcc on Fedora 9. I had to make some minor changes to the sample SDK code to compile with the new gcc compiler though.

So what have I done? I merely wrote a small program to add two arrays of limited size. This whole example is very simple demonstration of how to pass data from host CPU to the device (GPU), do the computation on GPU and get back the results. Well a lot of such examples are there in SDK samples .. but you see, if you don’t do it your self, you don’t get it ;-) The source is available here (deceptively called vecdot.tar.gz)… and what is this thing called documentation?

Xming: opensource X sever for windows

I was just searching around to check out for a good X server implementation for Vista, and was surprised to find opensource high quality Xming. If you use your windows box to remotely connect to Linux box and some times need GUI applications for Linux ... this is highly recommended!

MeTA Studio update: the big and small changes

Ok, the big change first. Starting from the current version (MeTA Studio v. 2.0.09102008) a customized version of BeanShell library is being used. This change was largely entitled, because I found that some threading issues are not property handled in the original BeanShell implementation and turn out to be resource hungry when run inside MeTA Studio. This means that from now on MeTA Studio will use a separate source base of BeanShell. In the coming days I will post the updated source base for MeTA Studio which will include the changed BeanShell package source.

Next, a new component for finding-text-as-you-type (see screen shot) is introduced at various places (such as code editor, search result page etc.) so the finding text information and coding becomes easier with in MeTA Studio.

 

For, developers only, a thread monitoring component is added to the “Job notification and query panel –> MeTA Studio Scheduler” panel (see screen shot). This panel will be expanded in future to include more information and control.

Other small changes include a number of bug fixes in various components, especially the Federation framework (hopefully things are better now for discovering peers!).

Finally, as with previous few releases, the current release is also purely online release, means you need to download the latest full binary package (from http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/), and then use the MeTA Studio update service to get this latest update.

 

PS: Please be patient for the latest source release ;-), this will be done in coming few days…

Turing test: will it prove any thing?

Guardian is reporting that six computer programs will answer questions by human volunteers at the University of Reading in a bid to become the first recognized 'thinking' machine, in essence pass the Turing test. To me it appears that it would probably prove nothing, at least for the time being.

For instance, if the “AI” computer programs are coded to follow a particular grammar and semantics,  it can, never be taken as a machine that “thinks”. Over time, humans have evolved their grammar and language, can machines do the same? For the time being, I do not think so. A big example of this is the way SMS text messages are frequently sent [r u tr?, ts is gr8!, i wil cal u l8r!] … can a computer program that is only programmed (or “learn”) how to interpret English, would ever be able to “think” and understand this SMSenglish? I seriously doubt!

Minor updates to MeTA Studio

.. again only online updates ...

This version adds: support for automatic monomer detection, and some bug fixes ;-)

Engineering Windows 7

This is an interesting blog from MS engineers on the development of Windows 7. It gives some interesting insights into what goes into developing a morden customer OS.

MeTA Studio gets another update!

.. This was really quick...

Ok the major addition to the code is that now you can easily add external libraries to MeTA Studio which will be automatically loaded the next time you start MeTA Studio instance.

Here is what you need to do:

1) Ensure that you have the latest version [Right now the only latest version is the one that is offered via online update, so even if u download the latested binary package, you need to update it using online updater]

2) To add a new library:

     a) create lib/ext under MeTA Studio installtion directory if it already does not exist.

     b) copy the .jar file of your library to the above directory [say you want CDK (chemistry developmet kit), then you may put cdk.jar in lib/ext]

     c) Ensure that no instance of MeTA Studio is currently running. And then issue the following command from bin/ directory under MeTA Studio installtion director:

       

          java -jar MeTA.jar --addlibs cdk

         You can specify multiple such entries in one --addlibs command.

3) To use the newly added library:

    ... well just restart MeTA Studio ;-)  [UI / daemon mode]. You will be able to access all the libs from any BeanShell script that you write.

Well... we are slowly developing something interesting here, more on that later ;-)

PS: Now with the online updates, this package will be most often updated. The source will also be updated frequently, but a bit less than online updates. And finally, full binary distribution will be updated least frequently as they are a bit large for me to upload from my limited internet connection.

PPS: This version also has some standard bug fixes listed on: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/issues/list.

If you wanna report bug, want enhancements etc. head straight to http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/issues/list

Note: To Vista users, online updates and adding external libs must be done with administrative privilages if you have installed using the windows binary installer and UAC is turned on.

MeTA Studio update: new features and UI tweaks

A new version of MeTA Studio is now available for download from the usual place at: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

This version introduces a number of updates:

a) First and foremost, the binary package downloads are no longer from the UoP chem server, but are from SkyDrive. This is because I am no longer associated with UoP and hence have moved out the binary download site.

b) The source updates are now stripped of the the generated Java docs which allows me to keep the whose source tar ball small and thus make it more frequently available from: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/downloads/list

c) Starting from the current version (MeTA Studio v2.0.14092008), an online update service is introduced. The updates are kept at: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/ and are fetched by the updated manager. Note that this is the best and cheapest way to keep MeTA Studio updated from now, of course, once you have installed the complete binary package of the current version. However, note that this service currently doesn't work properly on Windows Vista, if you have used the windows specific installer. One workaround is to start MeTA Studio in administrative mode and then attempt an update.

d) Preferences tab now contains a button to show a simple federation rule editor. This is to allow changing security rules of underlying federation framework without restarting the editor.

e) A new command line switch (apart from --daeom, to start in daemon mode), to execute external script without starting the MeTA Studio interface:

java -jar MeTA.jar --script <script file name>

Currently the only supported script is of the type BeanShell. This feature allows you to write scripts that are entirely new applications, but runs inside the MeTA Studio virtual environment :) Boy this should be cool ;)

f) Assortment of bug fixes and routine changes [detecting monomers] ... something you always expect from an update ;)

g) and a number of more scripts in scripts/ folder so that you can write more of what you want to enhance the IDE.

So try out the stuff and give me feedback...

Puppy and Fluxbuntu: perfect for Indian netbooks?

A netbook for India should be a sub 10,000 INR device. In fact, should be well below 10, 000 INR to have a mass appeal. None of the products available in today's market are any where near this price range. The cheapest in the range is Eee PC 2Gsurf and HCL MiLeap X which cost around 14, 000 INR.

But the fact remains that, for a netbook (or what ever you call it), a basic computing device with Internet access, to be accessible to an average Indian, should be priced well below 10K INR. I have no idea of how this can be achieved, but am a strong believer that it is not difficult to make it a reality. Some of my ideas of how such a device could be built is what I would try to jot down in a series of posts. I call my creation "peoplebook", which as of now is nothing but a vaporware, until someone picks up the idea and builds a real usable product. Or someone generously funds me to materialize the idea ;)

The first and the foremost requirement of building a device like this should be that applications and in fact the operating system itself be built using the same hardware. This immediately disqualifies many devices that can provide cheap hardware, including ARM based devices which are heavily used on mobile phone and other low power devices.  The biggest drawback of ARM based devices like Simputer, Mobilis, Nokia Internet Tablet or Smartphone (based on Symbian or Windows) is that they require a host computer (the dependable PC) to build the software stack. Moreover it is overlay complex to change operating system on these kind of architectures. So the best bet is to use a x86 compatible low power processor which can support a standard Linux/ Windows OS. As Windows has a licensing cost, which eventually adds up to the total cost of the device, I can safely rule out using Windows here. So the natural choice lies in choosing GNU/Linux for the purpose. Building a customized Linux distribution is not exactly an easy task. Though projects like Linux from scratch (LFS for short) do give you hands on for building exactly that, maintaining and upgrading constantly evolving Linux stack is again a problem. So the best bet is to use standard Linux distributions that are available, build by those who are good at it and supported by community. While distros that fall in this category are easy to trace: Ubuntu, Fedora and OpenSuse, all of them have pretty hefty hardware requirements and may not be able to support low power hardware that I am talking of.

While Intel has introduced a new range of low power processors called Atom, along with its previously available Celeron-M ULV and A110 processors, they will still be requiring fans for cooling. This a major hurdle in bringing down the cost of the whole system, as having no fan will eventually translate to thinner and more portable devices that are probably far efficient in power consumption. So, for the time being, I would rule out using a Intel branded x86 processor. The most qualified processor for such a device appears to be Via's Eden processor with the Nano-ITX board. This processor and board seems to be an extremely interesting architecture for building such a general purpose computing device. I am not sure though as to why other people have never tried this, or have they?

Though Via's Eden processor is quite a capable x86 processor that can support Linux and Windows, its definitely not suitable for heavy weight distributions like Ubuntu or Fedora. So in the search of a lighter but complete distributions, I found two interesting ones: Puppy and Fluxbuntu. While Fluxbuntu is based on Ubuntu, but is tailored for low power devices, with 64 MB RAM and about 2GB of hard drive, Puppy is exactly meant for similar hardware (but about 256 MB ram is required) but has been around for quite a long time and has a wider community support.

Since, I didn't have actual hardware to test out these distros, I first checked Fluxbuntu under the Virtual Box environment, with 64 MB RAM and 2GB HDD, but with Intel Core 2 Duo processor @ 1.86GHz. This gave a reasonable and usable desktop with software for word processing and browsing. But its no fun testing on a virtual environment, so I installed Puppy on a 2GB USB drive and then booted my MiLeap with it. MiLeap uses Celeron M ULV @ 900 MHz and has 512MB RAM and 30GB HDD and currently runs Windows Vista Home Basic. For our purpose we have only 2GB HDD as Puppy is now installed on the USB drive.  This installation turned out to be snap for booting from the MiLeap.

Now some real applications stuff: Puppy comes with standard tools for editing docs (Abiword), browsing Internet (Skymonkey, with embedded flash player for playing youtube) and music player (xine, with requisite codes for playing most of the media files). On development front, you can install the latest gcc and other libraries to use Puppy as a platform for developing new applications, or even building new customized Puppy distributions. The same is true for fluxbuntu, however the support for this distro seems to be lesser.

I feel that if someone could piece these things together, with cheap and low power x86 hardware, one can build a really usable machine for the general Indian public and satisfy their computing needs.

[Lots of blah blah? You will have to bear with me till I see these kind of devices ;) ]

Google Chrome: Simply terrific :)

And finally they have it here! Google just released a beta version of their browser called Chrome for Vista and XP. And I am already loving this so much that I have stopped using the IE8 Beta 2, with immediate effect and am using this as my default browser now.

This is the best ever design of the Tabbed UI I have ever seen... On the tablet integration stuff for which Firefox and Opera failed, Chrome also fails, but its simply too tempting to dump this fresh and lightweight browser. I will be installing this on my MiLeap too :)

Update: Most of my frequently visited sites work great with Chrome. However one thing I miss is the superb RSS reader like the one available with IE... so for the mean time IE8 beta 2 not dumped :)

Update2: (See the screen shot), its got some serious tools for Web App developoers and Task Manager and a Memory meter, note IE8 beta 2 and Chrome beta memory usage ;)

Why I will never buy an iPhone?

The iconic iPhone has officially arrived here in Bharat. At the stroke of the mid-night of 22 Aug 2008, it was introduced in India, as it was done world over. But there was a marked difference, no one was queuing out there to get the first hand on that device. For the price tag that it is supposed to be sold, its definitely not for the Indian masses. I am one of them.

Ever since I have been using mobile network, I am using smartphone. First it was Nokia 6600, and now its Nokia E51. So actually speaking I am smartphone user form the beginning. For the past two times I have bought a smartphone, I have always got a basic model that has got all features. I got E51 lately because its the cheapest phone that has all the connectivity options including WiFi and can handle most of the file types that I frequently use on my desktop and laptop. I am price conscious, and always look for the best offer in the least price. My earlier posts on mobilis/simputer had effectively indicated by what I mean by this product pricing issue. This is the prime reason, I will never get an iPhone. The second reason is openness in installing applications, which is tightly controlled by Apple. The third reason is based on speculation: does Apple use the Darwin core on iPhone, if so why is it not making it available to the community?

Moreover, the iPhone does not support (as of now) some common file types that I use frequently. The only advantage it seems to provide over my E51 seems to be pretty looking and touchy interface. To pay almost thrice the cost for such features, is simply not convincing for me.

An iPhone that is tied like this, to the network, is highly priced is simply not worth it. I would better wait for Windows mobile 7? or something more interesting for Linux world like OpenMoko.

MeTA Studio update

Had been a bit too caught up with many activities... so didn't get time to post on the updates. Well here hare some of the updates on MeTA Studio...

First and foremost, a software report describing the MeTA Studio platform has been accepted for publication in J. Comput. Chem. (currently ASAP). I hope that this brings in wider audience and more developers for the MeTA Studio platform!

And well after that wonderful news, here are standard set of improvements on the platform.. again no major updates right now, but expect quite a few in coming versions:
1) More cleaner federation framework interface for writing user level applications. See scripts/ directory for examples.
2) Federation framework now includes a new service for transferring files (binary or otherwise).
3) Many bug fixes and enhancements as enlisted here: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/issues/list

Switching form Ubuntu to Windows Vista! (...installing Vista on HCL MiLeap-L)

I never thought that anybody will ever write such a post! And I would have considered myself to be the last person to ever think of making the switch.

But it happened. I have been using Windows Vista Home Basic on my HCL MiLeap-L, which originally came loaded with Ubuntu 7.10 which I had upgraded to Ubuntu 8.04 very recently. The switch was not a single day decision. I was using Ubuntu on my MiLeap of quite a time, in fact ever since I purchased it, thats about six months ago. Over the time I realised that I was spending more and more time configuring and fine tuning the Ubuntu installation than actually getting any real work done. True, I learned (majority of the times re-learned) many a things, but I just felt that all this was a complete waste of time. The Ububtu updates are one of the most horrid experiences; they can come any time (unlike scheduled release of Windows updates) and they are big all the time (10s or 100s or MBs!). Then as I mentioned in this post, that I had to recompile the rt73 drivers for appropriately supporting wi-fi ad-hoc mode... this resulted in another pain, every time there is a kernel version change, I had to recompile these drivers. And after I updated to Ubuntu 8.04 there have been at least a dozen of these updates. All this made me think hard and finally I switched over to Vista.

I have installed a Windows Vista Home Basic edition on MiLeap, as this is the only edition which is fit for the kind of hardware that is there on my laptop. I chose Vista instead of XP because I have been using Vista on primary desktop and my experience with it has been a far better environment than XP.

It took about 2hrs to completely install Vista and get the desktop. The drivers for my Wi-Fi and Sound were missing in the default install. Which were easy to obtain from Windows update ( I connected to the net using the Ethernet port on my laptop). I also quickly updated to SP1. Overall the amount of download was about 300 MB. This was far better than Ubuntu, where I am sure that I have done more than 2GB updates.

So what do I miss from Ubuntu world?

If I forget about the philosophical reason for using Ubuntu, which anyway a user hardly cares (a user psychology is always to get her task done, and very rarely how the task is done)... I only miss one thing: the gcc compiler package. That said, I rarely used it on my laptop, as most of the time I accessed it from either my VirtualBox installation or my old and well configured FC6 linux box. There was obviously no problem in installing Python and Java on my laptop, that I frequently use (need)...Python for trying out s/t quickly and Java ofcourse for MeTA Studio :)

Other things that I generally use on my laptop: OpenOffice, LaTeX, Media player and Browser are there in Vista. OpenOffice and LaTeX of course had to be installed. But the Windows Media player and IE7 are just great. I hardly used Firefox in Ubuntu (when I had it installed), but rather used Opera as it was better and faster. But on Vista I am sticking to IE7 for the time being, for some strange reasons like this and this [links to previous post].

The new Windows media player has a simple but amazing feature, that allows you to share your playlist to other Windows media player capable devices.. and you can guess what I do with my desktop and laptop ;)

Next, I used to use Gizmo to make voice calls to my GTalk mates... now with GTalk available natively, I am evidently not missing it.

Next, my laptop has a strange screen resolution: 800x480. Ubuntu had always trouble with this, most of the dialogs never fitted properly in the display area, even after I did a lot of tweaking. Vista was not without problems though. The first time I started it, it went to a virtual 1024x768 resolution and gave me a scrollable desktop! But after I changed the resolution appropriately, all most all the dialogs I have encountered are fitted properly in the display area... which is sorta great considering that Vista was never made for such a low powered ULCPCs.

Boot up time of Vista is about same as Ubuntu, provided AVG is not installed. In any case I installed and uninstalled AVG which I found to really slow down my laptop to make it almost unusable. So, for the moment I rely on Vista's "strong" security features and windows defender to protect me against malicious attacks.

Though battery times are almost equal for both Vista and Ubuntu, I find Vista does a better job in handling the "sleep" mode. For me the sleep and the hibernate feature never worked on the Ubuntu setup. But it has worked out-of-box for the Vista installation. And now, I never shutdown my laptop ... I just put it to sleep :-) Putting it in sleep mode has obvious advantage of getting the desktop back in under 20sec (max), as against about 2mins required to boot up the whole stuff. My desktop though boots in less than 20 secs, and wakes up from a sleep in about 5 secs ... owing obviously to quite high end hardware specs. 

So whats not well with Vista?

Well the general answer to this Q is, nothing so far ;)

But there are a few things that are not smooth. One of the prime things is the support for Bluetooth dongles. While on Linux I found that most of the dongles work properly without a hassle, this is not true with Vista, forget about earlier versions of Windows. I simply do not understand why this area is so neglected in Windows.

In Ubuntu, when running on battery mode, the GNOME applet always used to display the amount of time the battery will last. But in Vista so far what I get the the % amount of battery remaining, this to me is actually not so helpful. Till now I have not found a way to change this.

And what about Vista ratings?

aka. Windows Experience Index. Here is it:

evidently, the very basic stuff, if you compare it with my dekstop:

PS: This post was written on my MiLeap running on Vista Home Basic using Windows Live Writer.

PPS: I am in no way advocating the use of Vista. I am just telling my experience. Its for each user to decide what is best for him/her. I am no way related to Microsoft and this post is not endrosed by them either.

virtualization using java!

I have been using virtualization technologies on my Vista machine, but was surprised to find that there is a purely Java based virtualization tool exists.. and what a fun it runs on my Nokia E51 too, allowing me to boot FreeDOS on my mobile!

My New Laptop ;)

 

... so soon expect some updates to application written by me on S60 (2nd ed) phones (http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/s60) ;-)

MeTA Studio updates: new graphics pipeline, federation updates

This MeTA Studio update brings in an assortment of changes... especially to the backend graphics pipeline. The graphics pipeline has be rewritten (but all the public APIs preserved) so that external dependencies (like Java3D) are differed till they are acutally requested for. This makes using MeTA.jar to construct applets a simpler task and now only requires this file for all the default graphics applications. For an example take a look at: http://chem.unipune.ernet.in/~tcg/MeTAppletAdapter/MeTAppletAdapter.html
I will further update and release the source of the above link in comming days.

The new binary distro also include two files in scripts directory that give example on using the federation framework for building simple distributed applications: testfedconsumer.bsh and testfedservice.bsh ... more on this soon ;)

In the mean time get the latest from: http://code.google.com/p/metastudio/

... no source updates yet but expect that soon :)

UPDATE:
The applet adapter source is posted at: http://tovganesh.googlepages.com/MeTAppletAdapter.zip
The HTML/Javascript stuff seem to work well in Firefox, however there are some problems with IE. Didn't have time to look into it. Any help in this regard is appreciated!
This new interface is now used in WebProp.

When Operating System = Browser

I primarily use my desktop running on Vista UE and my MiLeap running on Ubuntu 8.04 for work and fun. As most of the real work that I do (read programming) is on my Vista machine, I many a times need access to Ubuntu to get some stuff checked in the Linux world for which I find using VirtualBox as the best solution. I had tried Virtual PC before, but I find VirtualBox to be much better product.

When I started using VirtualBox, I had installed Ubuntu 7.04 and later upgraded to 7.10. At the same time my MiLeap came bundled with 7.10 which I quickly upgraded to 8.04 as I badly need a lots of new stuff that was in 8.04 but not in 7.10. Was thinking of doing the same thing with my VirtualBox installation, but then something strange happened. My VirtualBox hardware emulation is actually pretty minimal for Ubuntu installation: 5GB HDD and 256MB RAM. I though for myself, I have the required gcc/g++ (which for my work has not changed much from the 7.10 to 8.04) and the only other thing I occasionally use is Browser aka Firefox. Now the only thing I really care about is a better web experience inside my VirtaulBox Ubuntu installation whenever I need it. I actually do not use any thing else than that: compiler and Firefox. So I merely upgraded to Firefox 3.0 and just forgot about what version of Ubuntu I was using. Later on I started jotting this down in the blog, from Firefox 3.0 on my VirtualBox Ubuntu (which version? what hardware?)

The above was just a description of what I had experienced in the VirtualBox environment. But lets take this further to real (yet mock) usage scenarios. User Joe buys a computer. Joe doesn't care about what kind of processor and stuff like that, the marketing guy on the counter manages to convince him that he has got the best deal. Jeo uses GMail for mail, PicasaWeb for photos, YouTube for videos, Google Docs for docs, spreadsheet and creating presentations and thats it. Jeo needs only these every day. He uses his favorite browser (the one that came with the OS) to access these services (to him they really are applications). Some day he discovers that there are alternative browsers and then installs one of the popular ones. After a few years Ubuntu and Microsoft come up with brand new OSs with tonnes of features and ever increasing hardware requirements. Joe doesn't see why he needs all that, stops buying (or using) new hardware and new OS, and just upgrades himself to the new version of the browser that was just released.

If this is how it works out for majority of users, Ubuntu and Microsoft will have tough time convincing users to try out their next best offering... of course this has a caveat that your favorite browser might stop supporting previous OS releases. As it happened with IE and Firefox 3 (no support for my old Windows 98 machine!).

Leaves me wondering about this cloud computing scenario. It looks to be an interesting perspective. Something that can't exist without the current client OS but soon these will be a thing of past when they will be accessed through low cost devices like ULCPCs... where only a browser upgrade will enhance the user experience. The applications keep improving on the sever side .. no need to purchase/download/install them locally. You only need a fat pipe, and that is becoming cheaper by the day. Sun Microsystem always says "The Network is the Computer"... looks like we are sooner or later headed that way.

On the developer front, this is gonna be another interesting stuff. Google is already providing a lot of APIs to access and build applications for its cloud computing resources. Note that you are here not developing on a isolated machine anymore, you are using a huge computing resource .. and the possibilities are limitless.

PicLens: something fantastic and worth trying

 

PicLens is a browser add-in for IE, firefox and Safari provides an immersive 3D experience for searching though various video, tv and photo sites. Highly recommended for Vista and Mac users. You can download it from here: http://www.piclens.com .

Internet connection sharing from Vista

I have a broadband connection on my main desktop that runs Vista, which has an ethernet port and a usb WiFi dongle. And I have HCL MiLeap-L that comes with WiFi on board. I always wanted to have internet connection sharing setup on my Vista machine so that I can access Internet anywhere from my house using MiLeap-L. Until recently, I could not figure out why the ad-hoc network created from Vista was not getting configured from the default NetworkManager applet of Ubuntu (MiLeap-L runs 8.04).

It turned out that this the problem with the default Ubuntu driver for the WiFi chipset on MiLeap-L. The default driver (supposedly a newer version) called rt73usb has buggy support for ad-hoc mode operation. So after googling around a bit I found that you need to use the legacy drivers rt73 and blacklist the newer ones to get it working. Moreover the older version is not compatible with the NetworkManager applet and you have to use its own GUI called rtutilt. So here is what I did to get stuff working:

1) I already have latest kernel update with the requisite build tools and kernel headers. If you don't you will have to get that using apt-get install kernel* build-essential.

2) Get the latest rt73 source from http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz

Do the following using root (sudo -s) credentials:
3) unpack, change to Module directory. Then make and make install.

4) Remove previous module: rmmod rt73usb

5) add:
blacklist rt73usb
blacklist rt2500usb

at the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

6) modprob rt73
depsmod -a

7) Install rtutilt using synaptic manager (u may have to enable extra repos)

8) disable NeworkManager applet from Main Menu->System->Preferences->Sessions

9) reboot and use Main Menu -> Internet -> RutilT WAN Manager to discover and connect to access point or ad-hoc network.

Note: If at any point of time you need to upgrade the kernel, you will have to most likely recompile rt73 drivers.

On Vista:
Its straight forward here.

1) First enable Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) on interface to which broadband is connected, in my case this is the LAN. This automatically assigns 192.168.0.1 then to the WiFi interface. The required gateway and other settings are also automatically made.

2) Then setup a ad-hoc connection using the Connection wizard in which can be initiated by clicking the Network icon on the task bar... or better still use the Instant search!

3) Thats it!

Hope this is useful to other HCL MiLeap users who want to try similar setup.

PS: when you need to use WiFi from any other source, you need to use the RutilT GUI now instead of the NetworkManager applet in Ubuntu.

PPS: This whole stuff was written on my MiLeap-L and posted using the connection that I set up as described above :)

Tried Opera too!

Tried the latest Opera 9.5 on Vista, though it looked great, I eventually uninstalled it as I faced similar Tablet PC integration problems. Is it the problem of the browser code, or MS didn't expose these APIs propertly?

Btw I installed Opera 9.5 on my HCL MiLeap (which runs on Ubuntu 8.04) and have instantly replaced Firefox 3 as my default browser. I find Opera 9.5 to be far superior and loads a lot faster than Firefox 3.